One frequently quoted study of the global costs of mitigating climate change put them at around $3 trillion by 2100, with the main benefits being felt between 2100 and 2200. Here is alternative way to spend around the same amount of money with around the same timescale of payback: terraforming Mars. A standard estimate is that, for about $2-$3 trillion, in between 100 and 200 years we would be able to get Mars from its current “red planet” (dead planet) status to ” blue planet” (i.e. a dense enough atmosphere and high enough temperature for Martian water in the poles and soil to melt, creating seas) – achievable in about 100 years – and from there to microbes and algae getting us to “green planet” status within 200 to 600 years.

The tragic accident, which could range from a broken leg to serious brain trauma, will test the volunteers of the Mars-500 project when they emerge onto a surface of Mars prepared in a Moscow laboratory.
The diagnosis and treatment will be coordinated between a surgeon on the landing team, another on the mother ship, and a medical team on “Earth” – who will only be able to receive and send information with a significant time delay.
After eight months of “space flight” – incarceration in a 1,000 square ft capsule – three of the volunteer crew of three Russians, a Chinese man, an Italian and a Frenchman will climb into a separate “landing capsule” on Saturday.

It will be Nasa’s first experiment on primates in decades.
If a manned mission to Mars ever takes place, the human pilots will be outside Earth’s protective magnetic field for several months, unprotected from solar radiation. Little research has been done on this sort of long-term exposure to low doses of radiation. Rats and mice have been exposed to this sort of radiation before, but that gives only a hint of what the effects would be on humans.
Eleanor Blakely, a biophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said: “Obviously, the closer we get to man, the better.”

There is new evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars… and that could point to the existence of aliens. Nasa’s Opportunity rover has spent much of the time since it bounced down on to the surface of Mars sniffing around inside a shallow depression, studying an outcropping of bedrock.